openspaceman

Whilst the tree may be hollow and the image is a bit dark the growth looks more like a burr than reaction wood to me.

I'd like to know too. Ours also exhibit yellow leaves which I took to be a mineral deficiency

Stick the numbers and descriptions on Arbsafe

Yes plus the expense I'm not sure of the significance of the conductivity but it is a limiting factor on retorts where the walls are the only means of heat exchange, this is why I believe drying should take place before pyrolysis. From what I have seen it's the very fact that the fire outside the retort that causes the problems because it is an uncontrolled temperature, with around 450C inside the retort and 800+C out there is a lot of scope for damage. Which is why I think the temperature outside needs to be controllable, even though I would probably not use this sort of retort. I bow to your superior knowledge of steel grades as I am not sure what SS was used in the retort I saw but the life was not sufficiently longer to make it worthwhile over 45 gallon drums which lasted for 10 or so burns,.

Feel free to ask, I'm no expert but have been following developments since around 2000. Do a search on terra preta des indios because it was work on the fertility of these dark soils that triggered the biochar business. I am not a fan of using stainless in reducing atmospheres.

I have a cupboard big enough for a load of washing to fit on airers, it has the central heating and water pipes pass through it (by chance). I sit a £150 delonghi dehumidifier set to half way on the dial and it dries most things in 12 hours. If chainsaw trousers didn't dry I would just add a small electric heater. I had a larger one built at the old firm with an electric heater and bigger dehumidifier and that dried about 3 men's gear over night but I drained the condensate outside via a pipe to avoid emptying the tank. I find this much easier on the clothes than a tumble dryer with no lint produced (or catch fire)

I agree, in a clay soil biochar probably adds a bit of drainage but clay soils will have all the humus and minerals she needs for things other than grain crops. There's a lot of hype marketing by the likes of carbon gold, who incidentally turned me down for a job.

Steve am I getting boringly predictable? Actually activating is a specific process to do with carbon and what you describe isn't it. What you describe is more preparing it for use in the soil. Activation is when a sample of char, traditionally made from bone, is "attacked" by chemicals, e.g. chlorine or super heated steam, which hakes indentations in the cell walls and thus massively increases the surface area of the char, this gives more space for organic chemicals to be adsorbed by the char. It is measured by the mass of iodine the same can adsorb, Freshly made char has only a modest iodine number. Many claims are being made for biochar and it almost certainly is not a cure all in all situations. Even our Malling research stations seemed to make the mistake of "rationing" its use to better soils when the indications are it has more effect in poorer soils likely to leach nutrient. DEFRA still don't licence its use because of fears the smaller particles will wash into the surface waters and affect riparian life (in much the same way cement and builder's sand can). My interest evolved from work on a specific type of cookstove aimed at cleaning the indoor atmosphere in those parts of the world where cooking is done inside over an open wood flame. A quirk of this type of stove (Reed-Larson aka TLUD) is that whilst producing a very clean flame it left a ~25% residue of char, burning this char increase the particulates released so being able to use it on the soil offered an alternative. Obviously there is some negative affect on wood consumption as 50% of the fuel value stays in the char. Now to the global picture: a huge amount of CO2 (6+ billion tonnes/annum) is being released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion and whilst it is a small part of the 100+ billion tonnes cycled by plant growth and decay it is increasing. Intervention in the decay by making biochar is a way of sequestering carbon which would otherwise quickly enter the atmosphere but politically there seems no way of those producing excess carbon dioxide rewarding a distributed system of sequestering via biochar in this way. As I see it biochar would have all the advantages of a cash crop without the disadvantages of needing to export fertility with the crop IF there were a way of rewarding the activity by otherwise subsistence farmers.

No difference but biochar is often smaller and quenched to extinguish it.

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/firewood-forum/88640-2-moisture-testers-2-different-readings-sigh-2.html#post1311412 for my explanation.

355kg

Essentially if you let a 12V battery fall to below 11V you compromise its life greatly. Stick it on the charger and wait.

How many cells has it got, 3 for 6V 6 for 12V? You'll soon fry a 6V battery with a 12V charger.

Me too, I'll fix old saws but for frontline work I'd always buy new.

It looks like a scale insect infestation but the holes are from a bird looking for something under the bark.

I think so PM sent

It came to me, his name is Greg Hopkins

I try and get most off with gelled oven cleaner, then just a bit with carbide paper. What is the red gasket stuff, I'll need some. BTW only just seen you joined last month, welcome.

I've plenty to do with building my shed and having rewired the tweeter on my ancient AR4x speakers today but in general my time has little value so I played. Just as well to warn others though. Also a very good argument for hobyists to use that premixed expensive fuel in the red plastic cans

Not really, you want the air to go in as cold as possible, the compression soon heats it up enough to ignite the fuel. Each degree C cooler you can get the intake air down to after the turbo increases the air mass you cram in by 1/273. It's the very act of increasing the pressure of the air intake by the turb that increase the temperature and this needs to be lowered.

And here. The 1980 Highways Act refers and says something along the line of "must not endanger the public" so there may be a case if the path is only 4ft wide but not if it's a track. I recently lost a public appeal where a barbed wire fence was erected along a 2m wide footpath on the public side and yet I still cannot understand why the inspector allowed it. IMO best practice is barbed wire to keep the stock in and a plain guard wire on the public side slightly higher than the top barbed wire.

Thanks and I had already found everything you say is right, the clutch and flywheel have to come off along with the ignition module. The choke link once removed allows the carb to slide up with the barrel but I'd already unbolted it. Lord knows how I'm going the get the AV and handles back as it was a chinese puzzle getting it off. Now here's the crunch: it's a 150 quid saw, to get to the same stage with a ms261 takes 30 minutes and the same back together again, because you leave most of the saw complete. This saw involves double or treble the work so even a minor repair becomes not worthwhile. Also as it's a stratified charge engine in a narrow bore, cleaning aluminium pick up off the bore is fiddly and difficult to see. I've ordered an after market piston but wish I hadn't bothered.

Could someone give me a brief sequence for getting a MS171 barrel off, I've not done one with clamshell design and am a bit wary of disturbing bearings? An old primary school friend has brought it round because it wouldn't spark but that was because the bore was dry and the piston had seized slightly so it wouldn't spin fast enough to spark.

I didn't use anything bigger than an 8tonne linkage winch and twin 4 tonne Iglands on my Counties and could generally shift 120Hft once they got to the butt plate. Dave from Wallingford wanted more so he had a high fairlead for his boughton on an 1164 but it was always 2WD, so he found a front loader which he put a powerfork on. Whilst it kept the front wheels on the floor it soon strained the bell housing so much it broke the machine in half. By 1984 it was very difficult to sell ground skidded softwood because the dirt affected sawmill production so we moved to shortwood for softwood and hardwood pulp.

CE in this context means caveat emptor. It's actually quite complex researching the relevant standards to make the technical file which the certificate of conformity refers to. I produced one for a chipper that required considerable modifications to comply but the chipper manufacturer still issued the certificate and CE mark, as long as no accidents happened it would never be found out. From the picture of the 3d printer I imagine they have not tooled up for production yet.